Namesake
by Lt-Riza-Humphrey
Summary: the daughter of riza and david hunter


Left off on page 2

I am Colonel Lauranna Elizabeth Hunter, I am 25 years old, and I hate my name.

Now, Laura isn't exactly a distasteful name. It's not half as bad as, say, Harley or Frankie or Betty. Laura is a good, strong name, good for everyday wear and tear. It's short, so it doesn't need any nicknames, but still has that slightly exotic flair that every underused name does.

No, the problem isn't the name itself.

If you don't know me, you'd probably think I had it good. I am, after all, the youngest daughter of four children of President David Hunter and Riza Humphrey. I have two brothers and one sister. My brother's names are Jeremiah Tyson Hunter and Christopher Matthew Hunter they are both 27 years old, because they are twins. My sister's name is Roxanna Twyla Hunter she is 30 years old herself.

I am also, one of the youngest women ever to become a Colonel. My skill with a firearm is seconded only by that of my mother. I have four loyal and capable subordinates and – if I do say so myself – a rather beautiful face. What more could a military woman want?

I can still remember the very first time I decided that I hate my name. I was 6 years old, and I and my parents were over at the Johnston house, as we often are on a Sunday afternoon. Ms. Johnston was my mother's best friend, before she passed away (passed away, what a lie! Before she was brutally murdered, that's I mean!). They were more like sisters than anything else, so it's only natural that her widower has always seemed like an uncle to me, and her daughter a cousin.

At least, that was what I thought before that day. At the time, Raven Johnston was 8, and there wasn't any reason for her to play with me or be my friend, really. But the adults were having some kind of private conversation, and Uncle Daraven told Raven to play with me. Barely five minutes into the building of our toy block castle, she looked straight at me with those big blue eyes of hers, and said coldly,

"I hate you."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you're not my mom." She said madly.

I'll never forget the cold, steely look in her normally warm eyes. It reminded me of the way my mother's eyes get when she was angry, but such a look seemed like an alien in cheerful Raven's eyes. I can remember her face so clearly, though the rest of the day is all faded and indistinct, as most memories become over the years. But I'll never, ever forget the way Raven Johnston looked at me, measuring me up to her mother, and quite obviously finding me lacking.

I never told anyone about that day, but I will not hesitate to say it changed my life forever. I suddenly saw the world in a different light. I suddenly understood the tightness around Uncle Daraven's lips the few times he was forced to say my name. I realized why my mother's eyes grew soft and sad the first time I wore reading glasses (and I silently cursed myself for picking the square frames, even though they were the ones I liked best). Everything clicked into place. All those sad looks Lauranna Johnston's old friends would send my way, or that strange expression that I came to realize meant they were reminiscing about another Lauranna.

I went through a phase of severe depression when I was about 13 years old. It seemed that no one cared about me, that they would truly be happier if I was dead and no longer around to remind them all of their dead friend. Sometimes I thought they hated me; other times I thought I hated them. My heart was bound in bitterness and anger, and at the same time I was swamped with guilt for feeling such things about my family and closest friends. I knew I shouldn't think such ugly thoughts, but I couldn't help it. Every time I asked myself whether I hated my father, or my mother, or Uncle Daraven, or Uncle Bryan...I would answer that no, I didn't. Whenever I thought I hated them, in truth I was only using them to take out the anger I felt towards myself. And realizing that only made me hate myself even more.

I cried a lot, held myself up in my room, even tried to kill myself once or twice. Like my mother had when she was younger. Somehow, she always seemed to realize when these incidents were imminent, and she always seemed to be right there at my side as I tried to sum up the courage to plunge the knife into my heart, to pull the trigger of the gun pressed to my forehead. She never wailed, or freaked out at me frantically; she was just there, one hand firmly holding the weapon out of harm's way, the other resting gently on my shoulder. "Laura, I don't think you want to do that," she would say softly.

And she was always right. Because she knew my position because, she herself had been there once.

The second time she found me trying to end it all, she offered me a way out. "Whenever I'm feeling angry or helpless," she said, "I go practice in the shooting range. It helps me calm down a lot, trust me. There's no telling how many times I've gone there and it helped."

I knew this already; I had seen her disappear go there a few times after a long day at work, or the occasional harsh argument with my dad. This time, she led me there by the hand, showed me the targets, and pressed a pistol into my hand. Looking at me with the no-nonsense glint in her eye, she said, "That weapon is a great responsibility, and a very heavy burden at the same time. I give it to you because I know that my own daughter will never use it for murder."

My mother is a very wise woman. Few mothers would be willing to give their fourteen-year-old tom boy daughter a real weapon, afraid that they might hurt themselves or someone else. But my mother was willing, because she knew herself, she knew my father, and she knew me. While she didn't know the source of my depression, she did know that I had enough common sense to handle a real weapon when given a reason to hold it. She trusted me, and because of that I could never turn that gun back on myself, or on anyone else. The very act of trusting me ensured that she could trust me.

Most people think my precise aim is a matter of simple genetics, that I inherited the skill from my mother. I don't claim to know anything about heredity, but I can tell you that the majority of my skill came from the frequency of my visits to the shooting range. Often I would pretend the vaguely man-shaped target was myself, or that the bulls-eye was my name, and I would shoot it down till there was nothing left.

By the time I was fifteen, I already wanted to join the military like my parents. I saw that as my way out of the stranglehold of my childhood. In the military, I could prove to everyone that I was more than just a tom boy girl carrying the name of a dead woman. There, I could be myself. But my parents would have none of it. "Eighteen," my father said sternly. "That's the minimum age, and I'm not bending the rules just for my daughter." My mother nodded agreement, and I could see there would be no arguing.

So I waited another three years, waited in an agony of adolescent self-pity. On my eighteenth birthday, I signed up with the military and became Private Lauranna Hunter.

But I discovered that life in the military was not all I had thought it to be. I was shown no favoritism, but my fellow recruits still looked at me askance, because they knew I was the President's daughter. Whenever I was praised for something I did, they would glare at me. At least no one looked at me with those sad, reminiscing eyes anymore.

I discovered that if it wasn't one thing, it was another. Few in the military knew or cared about my namesake, but it was common knowledge that I was the President's daughter. I suppose they thought I would use my status as the President's daughter to worm my way up the ranks. Trying to ignore them, I threw myself into my work, for as long as my eye remained on the target and my fingers squeezed around the trigger, I could forget about my name or the looks cast my way. It was as though I was saying, Ha! Take that, Lauranna Johnston! with every bang of my gun.

Every promotion was a relief. Though people muttered that I received them because I was the President's daughter, I knew I could stop any mutter with a simple display of my skill. And every promotion I received meant I could leave the mutterers behind.

I first met Anni James shortly after my promotion to the rank of Major. She was one of my subordinates, and she was such a friendly woman that I soon befriended her. Once, as she was telling me about her boyfriend over lunch, she said, "Say! Sir, why don't you have a boyfriend? I bet you could snag some with those looks of yours!"

To be honest, I had never really thought about that before. But it seemed that after Anni said that to me, I kept on seeing all the handsome military men that I had never noticed before, until they seemed to be everywhere. I reasoned that they were rather handsome, and wouldn't it be nice if one of them were mine, and on and on.

And then, yes, I released my natural charms on them.

If they kept records of this sort of thing, my father would have won the award for dating the most women in Cameron City. And I would have won the award for the most failures. It seemed that whenever I prepared myself to go over and capture a man's interest, I ended up saying something stupid or making one blunder after another that would ensure my failure. Some walked away, others smiled and politely refused for one reason or another, and I was left at the age of 22 without ever having been on a date.

That was the year I became close friends with one of my subordinates: Nathan Emery, the eldest son of the Emery Scientist. One might think that, our fathers being old friends and everything, we would already have an almost-family sort of relationship, like the Mayhal's. But the Emery's lived in some tiny village out West, and I had never met any of Mr. Emery's family except for his brother. So it was to my surprise that I discovered Nathan and Terra Emery, Mr. Emery's two daughters, were to be my direct subordinates.

I have made it my business to become friends with all of my subordinates, and at the time Nathan was only twenty-three-years old. Our friendship was largely due to a rather high-strung adventure I and my subordinates went through shortly after the Emery's were put under my command. Friends usually become closer when they go through adventures like that together, and even mere acquaintances can become the best of friends. This was obvious in the days after our adventure drew to a close, as the Nathan and Terra lay in the hospital recovering from injuries, and – a few days later – from prosthetic surgery.

I visited Nathan and Terra often, just to talk and take their minds off their pain for a while. One day, I was alone with Nathan while their mother was giving Terra a checkup. Somehow, we got onto the subject of names, and suddenly I discovered that we had a closer connection than I had ever imagined.

"My dad gave me my name because of boy he and Uncle Aarron met on their journey," Nathan told me. " Nathan Turner. His father killed him. He was like a little brother to my dad I guess, and he was devastated when he died. He realized how fleeting life is, how we have to treasure the time we're given, and just how precious that time is. So when I was born he named me Nathan."

I told him the story behind my name as well, and for a moment we merely looked at each other, sharing an unspoken understanding that I, at least, had never experienced before. "Sometimes, I hate my name," I said, and didn't have to explain why.

He just nodded and said, "Sometimes, I do too." After a moment, he added, "But you know... It's actually an honor to be named after someone your parents thought of so highly. It's hard sometimes, because people expect things of you that you could never fulfill, but in the end we should be thankful."

Thankful... It had been so long since I had felt honored to have this name. Had I ever truly been thankful? As I sat there in the hospital ward, in the chair next to Nathan 's bed, I realized that I have been so arrogant for my entire life. I am always thinking of myself, of my problems, my worries. Whenever someone said my name, I only ever thought about how much I hated the way they looked at me; I never once stopped to consider how they would be feeling. I had never stopped to think how hard it must be for people who used to know Laura Johnston to say my name without thinking of their dead friend. I had never considered the deep connection my mother must have had to the other Laura, for him to name her youngest daughter after him.

I have always been selfish, but that day I decided to let the wounds heal. After all, my parents would love me even if my name was Harley or Frankie or Betty. My friends, all the people I love most... They don't love me because or despite of my name. They can see me for who I am. To them, I am more than someone bearing the name of a dead woman. I have proof of this today in the form of a ring around my finger. How ironic that, after all my failures at securing a date when I was trying so hard, I was able to secure Nathan as my husband with hardly any effort at all.

So, in conclusion, I realize that I must review my earlier statement. I am Colonel Lauranna Elizabeth Hunter, I am 25 years old, and I am proud and honored to have my name. And I am glad to have the loving family I have and the life I have to live right now.

Sincerely,

_Laura E. Hunter_


End file.
